Vol. XXXIV NOVEMBER, 1913
No. 3
Qhbsvtioii
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE
DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE, ART, PHILOSOPHY AND
LITERATURE OF EDUCATION
FRANK HERBERT PALMER, EDITOR
CONTENTS
Moral Pedagogy. Kelly Miller. 133
The Recitation as a Factor in Producing Social Efficiency. L. E. Taft. 145
The Union High School Questionnaires. J. Ed%ar Coover 153
A Solution for Public Speaking in the High School. C. T. Manlier. 162
What is Trigonometry ? A. Latham Baker. 169
Efficiency in Teaching by Pictures. Horace G. Brown. 171
Examination Questions for Tennyson's "Enoch Arden." Maud E.
Kinqsley. ............ 179
American Notes—Editorial 1£1
Foreign Notes 138
Book Notices 191
Periodical Notes. 193
BOSTON
Published by THE PALMER COMPANY, 120 Boylston Street
LONDON. E. C.: WM. DAWSON & SONS. Ltd., CANNON HOUSE, BREAMS BUILDINGS
Entered at the Post Office at Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter.
$3.00 a Year
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Hart, Joseph K.: EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES OF VILLAGE AND RURAL COMMU-
NITIES. Cloth. 12mo. 111. ix + 277 pages. $1.00.
This volume contains helpful suggestions for the development of community
life. It appeals to the educator and the social worker, and -it is inspiring to
those who are working to bring the unpromising community to a realization of
its possibilities.
Holtz, Frederick L.: PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF THE TEACHING OF GEOG¬
RAPHY. Cloth. 12mo. xii + 359 pages. $1.10.
This book is designed for the use of teachers in the classroom and for
students in training for the teaching profession. The treatment includes an
analysis of geography as a science and a discussion of the pedagogical principles
involved in its teaching. Special methods of geography teaching are fully
treated in their relation to the subject and to its pedagogy.
Bancroft, Jessie H.: POSTURE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN, THE
Cloth. 8vo. 111. ix + 241 pages. $1.50
Round shoulders and stooped backs are causes of anxiety to many a parent.
This book, which describes the far-reaching harm due to incorrect positions,
contains invaluable suggestions and exercises for developing good posture and
maintaining it.
Dresslar, Fletcher B.: SCHOOL HYGIENE.
Cloth. 12mo. 111. xi. + 369 pages. $1.25.
This volume on school hygiene and sanitation, treating both city and rural
school and school-environment, is practical and up-to-date.
McKeever, William A.: TRAINING THE BOY.
Cloth. 12mo. 111. xx. + 368 pages. $1.50.
With a noble citizenship for each boy as his aim, the author sums up the
teaching of his book in these words : " Training the whole boy and not merely
part of him."
McKeever, William A,: FARM BOYS AND GIRLS.
Cloth. 12mo. 111. 326 pages. $1.50.
Development to the fulness of physical, moral and intellectual power, wel¬
fare as it means efficiency and joy in work and life: to these the author points
the way for the farm boy and girl.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 FIFTH AVE., : : NEW YORK.
CHICAGO BOSTON SAN FRANCISCO ATLANTA DALLAS
Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature
of Education
Vol. XXXIV. NOVEMBER, 1913 No. 3
Moral Pedagogy
Kelly Miller, Howard University, Washington, D. C.
giuHiuniiiaiiHimiiiir£ morality be taught ?" is as old a query as any
| 1 otter in the field of educational inquiry; but un-
I | fortunately twenty centuries of more or less dili-
| | gent quest has furnished no conclusive answer. A
5»iiiiiiiiiiiiiaiiiiiimiiir* we^ defined method of moral instruction is the
1 | missing factor in our general pedagogical equation,
i | Our common schools are graded with reference to
$]iiiiiiiiiiiidiiiiiiiiiiiic$ intellectual standards. The youth who leave our
colleges and universities with diplomas of the highest distinction
are but half educated at best. The degree—"Doctor of Philos¬
ophy in Chemistry" has not the slightest ethical significance.
Such degrees indicate pure intellectual distinction without any
moral connotation. The bepuzzled pedagogue, in all but despair,
still repeats the ancient query: "How shall we educate the other
half of the man ?"—only to be mocked by the hollow echo, re¬
verberating through the ages—"how?"
Before attempting methods of educating a faculty, we should
first inquire into the nature of this faculty and what its range
and limitations are.
On the negative side, morality may be defined as conformity to
accepted standards of conduct. From this point of view, it is
closely akin to manners, customs and social behavior. As the
latter are not directly taught, but rather caught from environ¬
ment, inurement and atmosphere, one might naturally expect
morality to be imparted in a somewhat similar way. Manners
and demeanor are not regulated according to any fixed principle,
but in harmony with the decrees of the prevalent social code.
134
Education for "November
In so far then as morality may partake of the nature of passive
conformity to preconceived standards, its mode of impartation
must be in the passive rather than in the active voice. But if
we regard man as being endowed with a moral nature parallel
with his intellectual nature, we should seek direct positive and
definite methods for the development of the one, as of the other.
It is not an unusual analysis to regard man as being endowed
with physical, intellectual, volitional, moral and spiritual facul¬
ties. The problem of the educator is to devise means and methods
for the unfoldment and development of these several faculties
and to stimulate them to the requisite power and exercise. Fol¬
lowing the biological analogy, one might say that these faculties
constitute the organs and the educator's task is to have these
organs perform their proper functions.
The test of the educability of a faculty is determined by the
range of its variability throughout the experience of the individ¬
ual and of the species. Thus the eye sight is practically uniform
in the same individual and in different individuals of the race,
throughout the healthy period of life. This faculty therefore is
hardly educable, in the sense of having its powers extended and
enlarged. The function of the occulist is curative rather than
educative. His chief concern is to restore the eye to its normal
powers in case of defective vision, whether incurred by age or
other deformative influences. The five senses are regarded as the
normal endowment, a fixed coefficient of every member of the
race. Restorative methods alone are resorted to in treating the
natural senses, but hardly direct formative processes, as in case
of improvable faculties. It is entirely conceivable that, in the
growth of knowledge, the fundamental senses may yet be found
to be subject to such wide margins of variation, that appropriate
educational processes may be devised for the several faculties.
There may yet arise specific educational methods of developing
and enlarging the powers of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching
and tasting. In the present state of pedagogy, however, these
natural senses are regarded on the same footing with instinct in
the lower animals. Through instinct the acquisition of the race
becomes a fixed patrimony of every individual member thereof,
and is handed down by inheritance, share and share alike, to all.
In the development and perfectability of such faculties, nature
Mora? Pedagogy
135
is the school-master, and allots her gifts with a swift and im¬
partial hand. But the slower and more inequitable processes of
human pedagogy are required to bring the more variable facul¬
ties to their full development and capacity.
"And reason rise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs; in that 'tis man."
The intellectual faculty is, perhaps, the most variable of hu¬
man endowments. The intellectual margin between the infant
and the man of forty, and between the untutored artisan and the
philosopher, is indeed a wide one. It is for this reason that
orderly programs for the education of the intellect were estab¬
lished in advance of those for the more uniform and equable
human faculties. When we speak of education, in the general un¬
derstanding of that term, reference is had almost wholly to this
faculty alone. Daily programs have been laid down adapted to
the growing intellectual needs of the child, from infancy to ma¬
turity. It is only within comparatively recent times that other
faculties have been given a small fraction of time and attention
hitherto monopolized by the intellect. We have vaguely sup¬
posed that somehow these other faculties, through instinct, or
some other provision of nature, would reach their full maturity
without the help or assistance of a stated pedagogy.
It might be argued that the physical differences among indi¬
viduals are also markedly manifest. The margin of strength be¬
tween the infant and the man, as between the ordinary or aver¬
age man and the giant is almost as wide, one might say, as the
interval between the corresponding intellectual extremes.
However, under the crude tuition of nature, individuals in
large numbers reach a certain physical standard which may be
regarded as normal. The amount of labor which an unskilled
man can perform in one day is the fundamental unit of value
in political economy. The experience of the industrial world
shows that, eliminating skill, a fixed scale of wage for the un¬
skilled laborer is justified in actual performance. The feats of
strength, even of the gi^nt, do not so far transcend the powers of
the average mature man as we may, on first glance, suppose.
Hercules and Goliath loom larger in fable and story than would
be the case if their relative feats of strength were measured in
definite units on a scientific scale.
136
Education for "November
The physical margin, however, is sufficiently wide and mani¬
fest to admit of a scheme of physical education reduced to a defi¬
nite program for the unfoldment and development of the powers
of each individual. It is not surprising, therefore, to note
that physical pedagogy, after the training of the intellect, was
the second to take on definite form and outline.
That individuals have different natural attitudes towards, and
capacities for the moral qualities is perfectly obvious to any one
who is acquainted with practical psychology. The moral facul¬
ties of the child, whether we follow the innate or the experimental
school of ideas, are obviously feebler than those of the adult. The
moral faculties of some individuals are notably superior to those
of other individuals. Some rise as far above, as others sink below
the normal standard. The moral margin, however, is not so
wide nor yet so patent, as the corresponding intellectual or physi¬
cal intervals. The practical standards of life require that every¬
body shall be as good as anybody. But no one expects everybody
to be as strong as anybody or that everyone will be as wise as
anyone. The fixed and invariable standard of moral excellence
grows out of a lack of appreciation of the variability of man's
moral faculties.
Let us distinguish between the moral and spiritual nature of
man, and regard those faculties as moral which express them¬
selves in terms of obligation and duty, and those as spiritual
which manifest themselves in worship, reverence, adoration and
devotion, and which crave the higher satisfaction by longing
after God, as the rivers tend to the sea, or as fire seeks the sun.
While the two are not divorceable, spirituality is the expression
of morality raised to a higher power. In this view, the spiritual
faculties are more markedly variable than the distinctly moral
faculties. No one expects everybody to be as pious as anybody.
The spiritual genius of mankind has set aside members of the
race with the highest spiritual gifts and endowments for the
sacredotal office, whose high function it is to partake of the things
of God and show them unto their less spiritually minded brethren.
A spiritual pedagogy, therefore, is easy to contemplate. Man's
spiritual nature, however, is subject to such sudden and instan¬
taneous transformations, that regular development and gradual
"growth in grace" is quite generally overlooked by spiritual
Moral Pedagogy
137
teachers. The doctrine of conversion whereby the individual is
suddenly, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, changed from
"darkness unto light", still dominates religious opinion.
"I ask no dreams, no prophet ecstasy;
No sudden rendering of this veil of clay,
No angel visitant, no opening sky.
But take the dimness of my soul away."
expresses a happy compromise between the ecstatic and the more
orderly mode of spiritual unfoldment. In either case, however,
the time element, so essential in all other schemes of pedagogy,
is all but altogether ignored. A rational spiritual pedagogy
awaits a further word from psychology. It may be found that
the period of adolescence, when the physical and psychological
foundations are in a state of unstable equilibrium, like a pyra¬
mid on apex, may prove to be the season when subtle spiritual
and other influences can be imparted with the slightest impress¬
ment, and with the greatest economy of time and effort. A
farther knowledge of the period of physiological and psychologi¬
cal "explosion" may yet lead to new methods in the education of
the several faculties.
The human will is a widely variable faculty. This proposition
needs neither argument nor illustration to enforce its obvious¬
ness. The pedagogy of the will, therefore, is, or ought to be
reducible to more or less fixed program of procedure. The will
is the dynamic faculty. Its proper development, therefore, is of
the highest importance. As the conduct is under the immediate
control of the will, there can never be an effective moral peda¬
gogy, until some method is found for developing, regulating and
controlling the volitional faculty.
Again the variability of the faculties may be determined by the
prevalent or paucity of geniuses in any particular domain. The
human race abounds in intellectual, moral, volitional and spiritual
geniuses, and in moral mediocrity. Buddah and Jesus, Aris¬
totle and Shakespeare, Alexander and Napoleon, Hercules and
Samson transcend the powers and capacities of the normal man
in their several spheres. If Socrates and Marcus Aurelius may
be suggested as illustrations of moral genius, it can only be said,
on their behalf, that the superiority of Socrates was in his in-
138
Education for 'November
tellectual conception of moral freedom, and that of Marcus
Aurelius lay in his passive conformity to the stoical standards.
Nowhere, however, can we find moral margins so wide as
those between the dilettante and the pugilist in physical prowess;
Theodore Roosevelt and the sluggard, in energy of will; Emanuel
Kant and the common artisan, in intellectual powers; or Savan-
arola and Herbert Spencer, in spiritual perspicacity.
Moral pedagogy, therefore, can not be stated, at present, in
terms of as definite program as can the development of the other
parallel faculties. The methods of attack are mainly oblique.
Historically considered, the indirect methods have been the
only effective ones and are likely to continue more effective than
the direct, until we reach a better understanding of the nature
and laws of growth of the moral faculty. Ethics undertakes to
state the laws of conduct and to point out, in intellectual terms,
the rewards of right conduct, and the inevitable punishment of
evil deeds. But experience shows that this is purely an intel¬
lectual gymnastic, and has never exercised any very great re¬
straining influence over the moral behavior. It is a safe venture
to assert that formal ethics never made a single human being better
"I see the right and I approve it, too;
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue,"
expresses a universal human experience and judgment. We need
not therefore be surprised at the parallel growth of education
and crime. Men do not gather moral fruit off intellectual trees.
Herbert Spencer has clearly pointed out that medical students
have a better knowledge of the evil effects of physical misdeeds
than any other class of young men of like grade and degree, and
yet it is notorious that their behavior in this regard is no whit
superior to that of students pursuing other professions. Theo¬
logical students, on the other hand, may be better behaved than
their confreres in other professions, but this is due to the fact
that they are under emotional rather than rational restraints.
Notwithstanding the unparalleled expansion of our educational
system, our jails and penitentiaries are full. Crime against per¬
sons and property grows faster than the population. Corruption
taints our municipal government and graft flaunts our national
politics. Selfishness, which today is expressed in the greed for
Moral Pedagogy
139
gain, has penetrated our national life from the lowest to the
highest places. Hatred of class against class is stimulated, crime
in its most hideous, as well as in its more recondite forms, abounds.
Education surely makes men wiser and more efficient, but it does
not make them better. The loudest cry of the age is for a peda¬
gogy that will improve the moral nature as the prevailing sched¬
ules improve the mind. "How can we make men better ?" is the
ever recurrent query. We continue to whet the intellectual
faculty with a vain hope that it will react upon the moral nature.
Tracing letters with pen has no relation to the golden rule; dates
in history, rules in grammar, points in geography and sums in
arithmetic will not lead to the observance of the Ten Command¬
ments. Facility in the fingers and efficiency in task will not lead
to the love of right or benevolence towards mankind. The intel¬
lect is indeed supreme in its own dominion, but cannot exercise
effective sovereignty over the moral domain. If you say to the
ignorant, "you ought to be wise", or to the poor, "you ought to be
rich," or to the vicious, "you ought to be virtuous," or to the
lethargic, "you ought to be strenuous", he will in each case, yield
a ready intellectual assent; but this mere passive intellectual
conviction has little or no reaction upon his actual state and
condition.
Taste and refinement have important reaction upon the moral
conduct. A boy with blackened boots is apt to keep out of the
mud. Men of taste and refinement of feeling abhor vice because
it is unseemly. The old fashioned maxim tells us that "God does
not love ugly." This principle is illustrated in the lines of Pope:
"Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
As to be hated, needs only to be seen."
If we should remove the restraints of social pride and taste,
we would rob the moral structure of half of its supporting basis.
The poet Goethe, with over-emphasis on culture as moral asset,
makes it supplant even religion in this regard.
"Who so has art and science found, religion, too, has he;
Who has not art nor science found, religion his should be."
Whatever may be the relative value placed upon religion and cul¬
ture it must be conceded that culture reacts importantly on con¬
duct.
140
Education for November
This leads to the influence of religion upon morality. The
history of human experience clearly proves that the great bulk
of mankind who have neither knowledge nor culture have been,
controlled in their behavior through the emotions. Religion is
based upon and presupposes morality of which it is a higher ex¬
ponent and upon which it has vital reaction. Laxity in religion
is always followed by laxity in morality. Cunning priest-craft
has exploited this relationship, sometime for the general good,
but often to carry out selfish political schemes. The function of
the church has been and still is in large measure to exercise moral
sanction and control over the conduct of its adherents, through
the enkindled emotions. It makes use of art, and music, prayer
and ritual, which, for the time being, lift the individual out of
himself and impart wholesome tendency in the right direction.
I halt my pen to lift the window and listen to the school chil¬
dren in a nearby building as they sing exultantly:
"Shun evil companions, bad language disdain;
God's name hold in reverence, nor take it in vain."
This is the only affective lesson in morality they are likely to
receive today, although the teacher will proceed to take down a
little book of moral maxims and explain with wearisome reason¬
ing their meaning and import.
The church has enforced the moral sanction through love of
God, hope of reward, and through fear of punishment. The
highest sanction to the religious devotee is "Thus sayeth the
Lord." The vitally weak point in the doctrine of reward and
punishment is that the premise is too far removed from the
conclusion. The deeds are committed in the world that now is,
and the reward or punishment is deferred to the world to come.
Herbert Spencer would short circuit this process, and so relate
deed and desert, that logical reward or punishment would follow
immediately from causative conduct. The difficulty with Mr.
Spencer's program is the impossibility of creating the requisite
artificial environment, for such swift and certain reaction. "The
burnt child dreads the fire" because the reaction is instantaneous;
but one may be the apparent beneficiary of evil deeds for a long
while, even for a life time.
The fear of punishment, immediate or remote, is today prac-
Moral Pedagogy
141
tically eliminable as a moral deterrent, and is relegated to the
prisons and reformatories to apply only to the "real hardened,
wicked."
"The fear of Hell's the hangman's whip
To haul the wretch in order."
Where there is an established church or universally accepted theo¬
logical tenets, religious control over conduct can easily be reduced
to a formal program. But the tangle of dogma and jangle of
creeds in America frustrate definite teaching through the higher
sanction of religion.
All of these indirect and oblique methods proceed on the im¬
plied assumption that the moral faculty is not a sharply definable
entity, capable of direct and specific formative treatment.
Throughout it all, one catches the faint undertone:
"Men must be taught, as if you taught them not."
But is it not reasonable to suppose that every human faculty
has its own peculiar nature, and that its nurture must be condi¬
tioned upon that nature ? The real problem, then, of moral peda¬
gogy is to determine the culture of the moral faculty, in terms of
its own essence and nature, as well as through indirect and oblique
methods which have hitherto prevailed.
How shall specific virtues be imparted ? The Apostle Paul
proposes a scheme of moral pedagogy based upon the homeopathic
principle that like responds to like, and that the moral faculty
grows by what it feeds on. "Whatsoever things are true, whatso¬
ever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things
are of good report,—If there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise; think on these things."
Herein consists the chief effect of moral maxims which con¬
tain in congealed form the quintessence of moral values. By
dwelling upon these, the moral faculty assimulates its own pe¬
culiar nurture. This method is in striking contrast with the allo¬
pathic and anti-dotal principle of making "the punishment fit
the crime." The moral faculty will readily respond to the highest
outgivings of the soul crystalized in moral beatitudes.
Specific moral teaching has been and will continue to be diffi¬
cult, if not impossible, so long as the world remains under the
142
Education for November
traditional bias of the absolute uniformity of the moral faculty,
and insists that all individuals shall be regarded as equal in the
exercise and development of this faculty. Under the theological
bias all conduct is either good or bad; right or wrong; without
any intervening grades or gradations. The only moral education
that this theory of things recognizes is that which suddenly, in
the twinkling of the eye, changes the nature from bad to good,
from darkness to light, from death unto life. If there were a
similar educational bias, which recognized only two grades of
mental development, intellectual pedagogy would be at a corre¬
sponding disadvantage. If the child were considered either igno¬
rant or wise, his education would be very difficult, if not impos¬
sible. But instead of this, there is a gradation of educational
values covering at least twenty years of his life, in terms of
which his intellectual progress is reckoned on a definite scale of
units. In physical education we have a somewhat similar advan¬
tage. We do not say that the individual is weak or strong, but
lead him on by proper development from one degree of strength
to another. But the moralist insists upon the two sharply con¬
trasted degrees on the scale of moral excellence. The moral
temperature must be either below or above the zero point. Beyond
that separate variations count for little or nothing.
The sheep must be placed on the right and the goats on the
left. The individual must be either honest or dishonest; truthful
or untruthful; just or unjust; pure or impure; kind or cruel;
good or bad. The fact is, no human being ever falls into either
class. There is none perfect.
"Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
Few in the extreme, but all in the degree."
The dogma of moral perfection defeats a rational plan of moral
perfectibility. Under the religious dogma we have just a Heaven
and a Hell, without an intervening Purgatory.
The fundamental process of science consists in fixing a scale of
units, in terms of which indefinite quantity may be accurately
measured. To find the common divisor is the highest process of
scientification; the smaller this divisor, the more accurate the
process. Until we can find a smaller moral divisor than the ones
now recognized on the scale, direct moral pedagogy must be mainly
Moral Pedagogy
143
guess work and haphazard. Intellectual pedagogy is possible only
because we have a well understood scale of units, in terms of
which we measure the progress of the pupil. We mark his in¬
tellectual advancement in terms of these units, just as we measure
the commodities of life in terms of material standards. This
lies at the basis of our graded scholastic system, and makes edu¬
cation almost a science. We can predict with almost absolute
certainty that the average child, within a given space of time, will
reach a certain stage of intellectual development and maturity.
When the child goes to the first grade at six, it can be predicted
with reasonable accuracy that he will finish the grammar course
at fourteen; the high school at eighteen; college at twenty-two,
and university or professional school at twenty-six. We can also
foretell, within reasonable limits, the amount of knowledge and
advancement appropriate to each stage.
We probably never shall be able to find an equally exact and ex¬
tensive scale of moral units. We must wait the result of experi¬
mental atid observational psychology to tell us more than we
now know about the nature and variability of moral faculty. And
yet it is obvious that the moral faculty matures in somewhat the
same order as do physical and intellectual faculties, and that in¬
dividuals vary in the nature of these faculties and in the process
of maturity.
The pupil in the high school recites in geometry and we grade
his recitation on the scale of ten. This grading is, or should be,
the resultant of three components: (a) the thoroughness with which
the task has been accomplished; (b) the comparison of the effort
with the pupil's best powers; (c) the relative performance of the
pupil and his classmates. But the pupil's moral test is always
graded either perfection or zero, which implies that all pupils have
the same perfect moral capacity. If the pupil works seven prob¬
lems out of ten, he would be marked as "fair", or "passable" in
the subject; but should he tell the truth nine times out of ten and
fail the tenth time, he would be put down as untruthful and
marked zero in terms of prevailing moral units. We overlook the
fact that it may cost "A" much less moral effort to tell the truth
ten times than it does "B" to tell it nine times. Each individual
has his own moral coefficient and environment. The chief effort
should be to find out, as far as possible, the moral capacity or
144
Education for November
disposition of the several pupils towards the specific virtues and
vices, and to strengthen the weak points gradually, just as we do
in intellectual or physical culture. To brand a child as hope¬
lessly untruthful or dishonest, or unkind, or selfish, because these
qualities are occasionally manifested, is of the same order of folly
as it would be to condemn him to everlasting ignorance because,
on a day, he failed in arithmetic or grammar.
A rational and definite moral pedagogy is not inherently im¬
possible, albeit, it is exceedingly delicate and difficult because
of the narrow limits of variation of the faculty to be developed.
An assured moral pedagogy is still the cry of the age, as it has been
of the ages. But if a moiety of the time, talent and zeal bestowed
upon pure intellectual pedagogy were devoted to this task, the
problem would be solved, and that right speedily.